


Sinnerman

by a_good_soldier



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (I never have a beta but that tag seemed extra appropriate), Bad Parent John Winchester, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Castiel in a Female Vessel (Supernatural), Dean Winchester Deserves Nice Things, Dean Winchester Has Abandonment Issues, Dean Winchester-centric, Dean learns how to speak to women respectfully, Gen, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Misogyny, Music, No beta we die like women on spn, References To:, Romance, Vaguely Humorous, Wayward Daughters (Supernatural), Wherein the author uses women as plot devices to teach Dean how to respect women ... hmm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29295138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: Dean listens to Nina Simone, reads Anne Carson, and makes out with a dude (sort of).
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & John Winchester, Dean Winchester & Mary Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 69
Kudos: 237





	Sinnerman

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Third Person Viewing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28138329) by [a_good_soldier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier). 



> This fic is a spiritual successor (but not a sequel) to [Third Person Viewing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28138329). Rewatching Supernatural from the beginning and getting in early-seasons Dean's head left me with a lot of weird feelings about misogyny and I am currently on an Emmylou Harris kick; thus, this fic was born.
> 
> Primarily, this fic is about Dean learning how to live in a world where the strategies he learned growing up with John — keeping himself safe by treating women and himself in a particular way — are no longer useful to him. This is a fic about misogyny in Supernatural, but it is absolutely a Dean-centric and possibly Dean-apologist work, so I just want to clarify that it probably won't be a decent critique of the show or its treatment of women writ large.

Dad still manages to surprise Dean, even years — hell, decades — after his death. Almost every time it’s an unpleasant one. Dad’s not a superhero; Dad didn’t treat you right; Dad was happy sometimes, you just never saw it; Dad is a monolith from under which you will never escape. Every time it cuts him down.

This time around it happens when Dean is sprawled out under his car, trying to fix his baby’s axle and CV joint. Cas plays a song, Dean likes it, Dean asks _who was that_?

And Cas says, _Nina Simone_.

Now it’s not— Dean’s not an idiot, okay. He knows who Nina Simone is. He’s heard the name Nina Simone, no doubt about it, but it’s shocking, to hear Cas introduce him to a classic he hasn’t heard before. He’s never heard her voice, and she’s striking; he knows after this song he’d be able to pick out her voice in a choir, in a crowd, from across a bar in a whisper. So it’s the stupidest thing, that he hasn’t heard her before, that he knows Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, hell, that he’s got Foreigner on lock but hasn’t heard Nina Simone. How does that happen?

“Sinnerman is a beautiful song,” Cas says. “I find the bridge especially compelling.”

“Yeah,” Dean replies distractedly, because he’s still trying to piece it together. Was there a tape he missed? Surely he must’ve heard her on the radio sometime or in a diner but he hasn’t. He knows he hasn’t. He’d never given it any thought before but probably if someone asked him, Dean woulda said that he’d heard Nina Simone and hadn’t liked her music, and it woulda been a lie.

“You got any more of her stuff?” Dean asks, finally, and Cas plays _Four Women_ , and Dean closes his eyes and doesn’t move a muscle as she sings that ultimate, that brutal, that fully-realized and still trembling line: _My name is Peaches_.

* * *

He has this hunch, right, and he doesn’t plan on making a habit of ignoring those. He looks up Sister Rosetta Thorpe. He spends some time with Ola Belle Reed. He branches into the future with Stevie Nicks and Dolly Parton. He listens to Sade’s _Pearl_ , and sits still as a gargoyle right on his chair, unable but desperate to cry as she sings _there is a stone in my heart_.

And through it all he thinks, _my dad never listened to this_. Not that he expects John Winchester to have listened to _Rumours_ -era Fleetwood Mac or to _Mahlalela_ , a track Dean randomly finds through a Youtube recommended sinkhole, but surely he might’ve put on a Billie Holiday record or two during all those hours in the car. When Dean thinks on it, though, he starts to wonder about all the times his dad switched the station, all those times he scoffed at a bassline or rolled his eyes at a set of lyrics and told Dean in not so many words what was right to like and right to dislike, and he realizes that he’s finally, finally figured out the pattern he’s spent half his life following and the other half dismantling stone by stone.

So Dean starts his days right by making his way alphabetically through the _List of female rock singers_ _page_ on Wikipedia. There’s some he really doesn’t care for, but others he adds to his growing records wishlist. He tries to give them all a fair shake, even the ones he already knows and has filed under _chick music_ , like Kelly Clarkson or Kate Bush. He phases out the Eagles in favor of Tracy Chapman, starts listening to Joanna Connor instead of Bob Seger. And all while he’s listening his shoulders are always hunched to his ears like he’s hiding from the air around him, but he does it anyway, thinking, a teenage rebellion twenty years too late: _Fuck you, Dad._

* * *

He kind of stalls after he gets a handle on listening to female musicians, but he knows there’s more to it. He figures he might as well do some more digging into this whole thing, the simultaneous vitriol and desire his dad had for all the women around him, the way he’d toss around the words _slut_ and _angel_ like every one of Dean’s girlfriends could’ve been both at once.

And it’s not like anyone in the bunker could help. Sam, maybe, but like hell is Dean gonna start by asking Sam about how to have normal relationships with women, and Cas probably wouldn’t be any help at all. It hits Dean that he only lives with men.

Which, well. He _knew_ that, obviously, but— how did that happen, him and his bros hunkered down in the Men of Letters bunker and all the girls out up near Jody? Did they each pick a state while he wasn’t looking, negotiate Nebraska as their anti-cooties border?

So, out of sheer desperation, he texts Jody. He says, **This is going to sound stupid as hell but do you have time to talk about sexism?**

Before he can talk himself out of it, he sends the text.

He almost drops his phone when Jody calls him immediately. “What the hell, Dean?”

“Uh— hello to you, too, Jody.”

“Yeah, hi, hello, nice to hear from you— but, why the hell are you asking me about sexism? Is this for a case?”

“For a—” Dean shakes his head, disoriented. “What? No.”

“Okay.” Jody draws out the last syllable, says _okayyyyyyy_ like she doesn’t believe a word.

“I— look. My—” But he can’t really say it. How could it possibly come out? My dad was… my dad said? What is he, a kid? Can’t think for himself? Not like his dad was the one asking for numbers out of waitresses which Dean can recognize now, in 2021, was probably _problematic_ or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

Jody sighs, loud and long suffering through the phone. “All right. Why don’t you come on up, and we’ll talk this out.”

Dean’s face flushes with embarrassment. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Sounds like you’re having kind of a crisis over there, kid,” Jody says, and Dean thinks, _she’s not your mom, she’s not your mom_ , and has to bite back tears anyway.

“You want me to bring anything for dinner?” Dean asks, once his voice is under control.

“Nah.” And Jody says, “I’ll see you tonight?”

“Sure thing.”

The drive up to South Dakota, as he makes it, is as monotonous as always. Dean’s got a soft spot in his heart for the plains, especially in the summertime when the sun washes over it all like a real and true blessing, but he can admit that the backroads route he takes to avoid Kansas City is deader than a Monday night strip joint. A few trees every so often but otherwise it’s just him and the road and the sky.

Most days he likes it like that. Nothing better for the soul than a bit of highway therapy, he’ll stand by that till he’s nothing. Today, though, he almost wishes he’d brought Sam or Cas along, just for someone to talk to about anything other than the one-two punch of knowing he’s not man enough and knowing he’s a piece of shit for thinking there’s anything wrong with being the other way.

Jody pulls him in for a hug like she always does once he gets there, and Dean actually thinks about it this time. Dad never hugged him outside of life-or-death situations — that would’ve been beyond absurd. But Jody makes it easy for him. He takes his shoes off and lets her take him to the living room.

“So,” she says, once they’re settled into the couch, “what’s this all about?”

Dean chuckles awkwardly. “Yeah. I dunno, I just. Been thinking a lot about— ‘bout the way Sam ‘n I grew up, y’know? How our dad was, the way we— the way I learned to make friends, have relationships, all that crap.”

Jody eyes him. “Did you call me just because I’m the only woman you know who isn’t under twenty-five?”

“Uh…” Dean gulps. He senses that _yes_ is not the correct answer. But… well. “I mean. I guess I coulda called Donna.”

“Points for honesty, at least,” she says, shaking her head but a rueful smile on her face. “Gonna be honest here, Dean. I don’t know a damn thing about gender studies or what have you.”

“Yeah, but you’ve got, uh.” Dean pauses. “Experience? From your life?”

“Lived experience?” a voice asks from near the staircase, and Dean turns around to see Kaia and Claire, who are disgustingly cute with their hand-holding and general in-love-ness. Kaia continues, “What’re you guys talking about?”

“The man came to see me about sexism,” Jody says. “You got any advice for him, ladies?”

“Don’t point guns at underage girls,” Kaia says, and Dean drops his head. Yeah. Yeah, he deserved that one, and more.

Claire comes over to perch on the arm of the sofa, Kaia following behind. “Seconded,” she says, but when Dean looks up she doesn’t look too angry, and Kaia doesn’t look actively murderous, so he figures they’re over that conversational trap for now. “But otherwise, I dunno. I don’t even really like thinking about being a… a woman or whatever.”

Dean has no idea what to say to that. Fortunately, Kaia looks consideringly at him and chimes in before he can flounder his way through a reply. “I have a book for you. But if you take it with you, you gotta promise to give it back.”

“Yeah, promise,” Dean says. She goes upstairs and comes back a minute later with a worn-out beige paperback, a woman’s face and hair illustrated on the cover in a faded red. She hands it to him. There on the cover, three bold words: I AM WOMAN.

“I got it from a community center that was pretty cool,” she says, while Dean flips through it. “It made me think a lot about my life. First book I ever read by a native woman.”

“Oh,” Dean says. He tries to hold the book with more reverence. “Th— thanks, Kaia. Wow.” He puts it at the top of his mental reading list, although he doubts he’s smart enough to get half of it. “I’ll make sure Sam knows to get it to you if I kick the bucket before I can. It’ll be the first thing in my will.”

Jody frowns at him, but Kaia grins, satisfied by his promise. It’s the only way he knows to tell her that he takes her gift seriously. “You better, asshole.”

“Okay, language,” Jody says, and Kaia rolls her eyes.

“Oh, hey,” Claire says, “you should ask Patience. She has a lot of books, might have some more reading for you.”

“I didn’t come here for a book club,” Dean grumbles.

Kaia glares daggers at him. “You came here to learn, didn’t you? Or did you expect everybody to bend over backwards spoonfeeding you knowledge like a kid.”

Dean shrinks. “Shit. No, you’re right, I’m— I’m sorry.”

Then Claire sighs, and says, “Wait here a sec. I’ll go ask Patience right now.” The three of them, Kaia hunched over at the end of the couch and Dean closed in on himself and Jody, watching it all like a hawk, wait in perfect stillness for her to get back. Dean hears voices murmuring upstairs, and then Claire comes back down with Patience in tow. “Here. Give him the books.”

Patience does, in fact, have a stack of books in her arms. “Hey Dean,” she says, pushing the books into Dean’s grasp. Stuff he’s never heard of. _The Second Sex_ , Simone de Beauvoir. _Feminism is for everybody_ , by bell hooks. _Coal_ , Audre Lorde. Like she’s embarrassed about it, she says, “I kinda had a phase, back in high school.”

Christ. Dean looks at the books in his lap. He remembers his own phases, back when he was young — his brief teenage stint sucking dick in grimy bathrooms, his early twenties spent bingeing on pop culture in the face of incredible loneliness, the insufferable months back in high school when he’d adopted a cringeworthy and possibly racist drawl after they’d had a case in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Patience was building a— a feminist library. Jesus fucking Christ.

This could still be her if shit hadn’t gone wrong. She could be in— in school, taking fucking women’s studies or whatever. Dean tries not to flinch at the injustice of it.

“These made me think a lot about my life,” she says gently. Too gently. Dean feels like a hulking monster here, intruding on everything. But he came here to learn, and by God, these kids are gonna push him through it whether he likes it or not. “I feel like you should start with the bell hooks one.”

“Thanks,” Dean rasps, then swallows, tries to get moisture into his throat. “Really, thank you. I’ll get ‘em back to you soon as I can.”

She shrugs. “Pretty sure I could find a PDF online for all of them if I need to, so take your time.”

Dean nods. He thumbs across the cover of Kaia’s book. I AM WOMAN. “All right. I’ll read this one first, then.” He tries to meet their eyes, tries to make them believe he really means it this time, really wants to change. “I appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well.” Kaia stands up, and takes Claire by the hand. “Don’t ask me if you have any questions.”

“I wanna hear updates though!” Claire grins at him, pure schadenfreude. “I can’t answer any questions but I _will_ laugh at your confusion.”

“Claire,” Jody admonishes, but Dean says, “No, no, hell, she’s right.” He smiles at her. “Okay, go on, get outta here.”

Claire pulls Kaia by the hand out the door, and Jody says, “You better be back before midnight!”

“Yes, Jody,” Claire calls, longsuffering, and Dean and Patience and Jody watch them head out.

Dean smiles. “Good kids you got there, Jody.”

“Yeah.” Jody’s got a smile on her face, too, a real proud mom. “Sure do.”

Patience rolls her eyes. “You guys are gross.”

“You know I’m real proud of you, too, of course,” Jody says, and Patience turns away, but not before Dean can see her small and careful smile.

* * *

After dinner, Jody sits him down with a beer at the kitchen table. Cozy as hell, even with the brutal wooden chairs that send pinching pain up from his hip. Christ he’s getting old.

“Well,” Jody’s saying, frowning. “I mean, you know my approach to crappy men. I don’t take anybody’s shit and I got the gun to back it up.”

Dean laughs. “Yeah.”

“But that doesn’t help you with this, does it.” She thinks for a second. “Okay. I got an idea.”

She stands up and finds a piece of paper somewhere in a kitchen drawer, and she slides it over to him across the table and hands him a pen. “Make a list. All the women you know.”

“I— Jesus.” Dean scratches the back of his neck. “The— the ones whose names I know, or—”

Jody rolls her eyes as she sits back down. “Gross, Dean. Yeah, let’s put some brakes on this before it goes completely off the rails. Every woman who you’d consider to be, y’know, part of your life.”

Dean nods. It makes sense. He swallows, then, and asks, “Including, uh.” He blinks. He’s not emotional over it. It’s a piece of paper. “Just the ones who’re alive, or…”

She sighs gently. “I’m flying by the seat of my pants here. No one’s ever asked me to talk to them about feminism before.” Dean tries to huff out a laugh at that, and Jody sets her hand on his wrist. “You write down whoever’s important to you. That’s all. No other rules.”

He can’t even look at her. Sometimes he wonders how the hell she’s made it, when everybody else— it’s a godawful pattern, his life. He starts at the top.

MOM

Christ, he’s— he’s not used to writing, how fucked up is that? His block letters are embarrassing on the page. He’s never felt so much like a kid.

JODY  
DONNA  
CLAIRE  
KAIA  
PATIENCE  
ALEX  
EILEEN

He stalls there. Jody says, “I know you know more women than that.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He doesn’t want to go there, doesn’t want to see any more death on the page in front of him. But he writes it anyway, trying not to feel like he’s sentencing everyone else on the list to their turn in the afterlife.

ROWENA  
CHARLIE

His hand shakes. But he keeps writing.

JO  
ELLEN  
PAMELA  
CASSIE

He puts the pen down. Says, hoarse, “Why do I feel like there’s a pattern here.” He won’t write it, can barely think it, but yeah, there’s another name that belongs on that list. He can still see her face, the way she’d frowned at him, gorgeous and half-forgiving already to a complete stranger when he’d said _I’m the guy who hit you_. When they were together in her bed he’d sometimes flinch away from her hands even though most times they went at it like rabbits, shaking and shivering with what they’d done to him in the pit, hating himself for bringing down his nightmares on her perfect life, and she’d say to him, _I love you. I love you because you’re you. You don’t have to earn your place here_. He can’t write her name down. What he did to her—

“It’s not your fault they’re dead.” Jody’s so fucking gentle about it, and all Dean can think is _I asked Cas to do that to them. I asked him to do it._

Maybe he’s focusing on that because he can’t carry the rest of it. There are six dead women on the piece of paper in front of him. Six. “It’s stupid,” he says, “it’s not— it’s not even _about_ me. I’m not the one who’s—” And there’s so many more people who’ve died for him than that. Jesus Christ. Jesus _Christ_.

“They’re dead,” Jody says, firmly but kindly. “You’re the one who’s left here. Of course it’s about you.”

Yeah, all right. She’s seen the kind of loss Dean’s always anxious over but hasn’t really felt yet, the loss of a child, and he figures she doesn’t have time for moralizing over how she does her grief. Maybe Dean should take the hint.

“I mean,” Jody continues, “if this were a— a TV show where all of this, everything about it was made up by people who decide who lives and who dies then yeah, it’d be a pretty misogynistic pattern. But this is real life.”

Dean laughs out loud at that one. “Fuck. Are you telling me God’s a misogynist?”

“A misogynistic serial killer,” Jody deadpans, and Dean snorts, because he can’t cope with the grief of it. His entire life is a fucking joke. A Friday night death slot rerun, 9/8 Central on some evil alternate universe version of Warner Brothers or something.

“Okay,” he asks, once he’s calmed down a bit. “Why’d I make the list?”

“Right.” Jody sets her hands on the paper like she’s trying to focus. “I had this idea, and— you don’t have to do it. But I was thinking you could write down your relationship with each of these women.”

“What?”

“Like… you know, how’d you describe this person? I mean, I can answer this one—” and she writes, next to her own name, LIKE A MOTHER.

Dean flushes. “I— that’s not—”

“I take it as a compliment,” Jody says, “although I’m definitely not old enough to be your biological mom.”

“Jeez.” But Dean gets it. It’s probably healthy to have, like, a diverse range of relationships with women, or whatever. He writes his best shot next to each name, taking his time over it.

Once he’s done, he presents it to Jody like she really is his mom, the kind of mom who likes to look over your homework before you give it to the teacher, fuck. So fucking embarrassing. But she reads what he wrote like she actually cares.

“I’m giving you a pass on the kids, because they’re, y’know, kids. But it might disturb you to know that you only have two friends on this list.”

“What?” But when Dean looks at it, she’s fucking right. It’s right there: DONNA — FRIEND and PAMELA — FRIEND (FLIRTY?). The kids are all like weird nieces to him (except for Claire, whose name is accompanied by a very, very begrudging KINDA LIKE MY KID I GUESS).

Charlie and Jo and Eileen are all like sisters to him, which he wrote. He had to write “mom” a third fucking time next to Ellen’s name, which just goes to show you how fucked up he is probably. And Rowena was, obviously, a bizarre and unfortunately likeable ally.

“Maybe,” Jody says, “it might help if you made more friends who’re women. People who you don’t want to sleep with and who don’t want to sleep with you.”

“Uh.” Well, he thought that’s what he was doing with Charlie, and he was pretty sure that’s the case with Eileen. So what if he calls them his sisters? People do that — hell, straight women call other women girlfriends which means something real different to Dean now that he’s subjected to Claire and Kaia mooning over each other at every family dinner.

But Jody says, “Sisters is… intense. And your life is intense! So maybe it makes sense. But I’m just thinking, you’ve probably got more guys in your life who you’d consider friends.”

At first, Dean balks at that. He’s got Sam, Cas, and everybody else. But then, well… there’s Garth, and Aaron, and even Ash, back when he was still around. Still. It’s not many. Maybe Dean’s just fucked up generally.

“I dunno, Jody.” Dean runs a hand over his mouth, thinking of all the bodies resurrected neatly in his unpracticed handwriting. He tries to fit it all together into one story but it’s the same one he’s always known, over and over again. Everybody dies, or they leave before Dean can get them dead.

Jody reaches for the paper — asks, “Can I take this?” and Dean nods — and tosses it into her trash can. “Look, I don’t know what I was trying there. But, uh. I read somewhere that guys usually think of women as like… archetypes. All women are either moms or whores or virgins. So I guess I was trying to think of, like, a way to break that down.”

“And I just built it right back up.” Dean blows out a breath, thinking of all those books Patience stacked in a plastic bag for him. “I should actually do some reading, huh.”

“Those kids’re pretty smart when they wanna be.” Jody pats him on the shoulder and stands up. “You better get on the road before it gets too late.”

“Yeah.” Dean picks up his book bag, pats his pockets to make sure he has his keys and his wallet. And then he turns to Jody. “Hey. Seriously, thank you. This — all of this — it means a lot to me.”

She quirks a smile at him, almost as familiar as Bobby’s was, by the end of it. “You know my house is open to you. All of you boys, too, when you decide to bring the family around.”

“Hah, yeah.” Dean nods, looks down at his feet. “I mean it, though. I’m real glad I got— I got someone I can ask about stuff.” He knows his face is red, knows his shoulders are hunched like a kid on his first day of school, but hell. Jody’s the one who wrote it on the piece of paper in the first place.

She pulls him into a real mom hug, and Dean closes his eyes into it. “Anytime, kiddo.”

Dean holds her close, hands gentle around the smallness of her the way he thinks he might’ve done to his own mom if Mary had lived to see Dean into adulthood, and then pulls back. He looks at her one more time, and then ventures out into the summer night to drive back home.

* * *

Cas has decided to set up shop in Dean’s room. It’s not a problem, obviously, just. Dean put on a Koko Taylor record from a dingy store he found out near Spokane, sprawled out on his bed, and Cas just walked in and sat at Dean’s desk with a battered copy of a library book like this room was his home, too. Dean doesn’t say a damn word.

He does ask, though, what Cas is reading. “Hunting the Northern Character,” Cas says. “It’s primarily about land use in the Yukon.”

“Great,” Dean says, because he can’t think of a damn thing else. Christ. Where does Cas even find this shit?

Anyway. Cas is reading about actual deer-and-moose type hunting in the northern reaches of Canada, and Dean has his eyes closed, thinking about Koko Taylor. Thinking about what Jody said, about who his friends are. Thinking about the fact that fuck, he’ll probably have to actually read one of those terrifying books Patience dumped into his hands with full confidence, as if she actually genuinely thought he’d have the chops to understand them.

And then he realizes Cas has probably read all that and can tell him about it. He sits up.

“What do you think about women?” is how Dean starts, which admittedly could’ve gone better, but also could’ve gone worse.

Cas doesn’t say a word. He flips a page of his book. And then he asks, “In general, or?”

Dean sighs. “I mean. What do you think about, like. Misogyny.”

“Misogyny isn’t synonymous with women, Dean.”

“Jesus Christ, Cas, I _know_ that.”

“Misogyny is bad.” Cas skims down the page with aplomb. Dean wants to punch him, but in a way that feels different from his other punching instincts. It’s possible that the word _punch_ isn’t actually very accurate at all. But Dean digresses. “That’s what I think about misogyny.”

Good God. It’s like pulling teeth with him, every single conversation. Dean says, “Misogyny is obviously bad. I’m saying, what is your personal perspective on misogyny, as a— you know.”

“Middle-aged white man?”

“ _Being who has a complicated relationship with gender_ ,” Dean hisses angrily, because he genuinely wants to know and is appreciative of Cas’s time and thinks his whole gender thing is actually kinda cool, and absolutely cannot let any earnestness be known in this shithole of a conversation.

Cas, unfortunately, knows him beyond all artifice. “I find human constructs of gender to be tiring, but I think I’m more attracted to men and masculinity than most alternatives. I think the concept of womanhood has evolved significantly over the centuries and millennia, and had I occupied a woman’s vessel rather than Jimmy Novak’s, I’m sure I’d call myself a woman for convenience, since I feel no attachment to any earthly gender. I think Adam and Eve were not really gendered creatures in the way that you might think of yourself as having a gender.”

Cas flips another page. Dean’s pretty sure he’s not even reading the goddamn thing anymore, just using it as punctuation. He adds, drily, “And, I think misogyny is bad.”

“Thanks,” Dean says, sarcastically, because he’s not sure what else to say. That didn’t really clear anything up for him. He gets — he gets that Cas is an angel, and angels don’t have gender, or whatever, but that line about Adam and Eve is fucking him up. What does that even mean? They were human, right? And he’s not even touching the _attraction to men and masculinities_ thing.

Cas examines him from over the edge of his book. “I don’t know what else to say,” Cas says, and this time, Dean detects a hint of apology. Dean knows Cas beyond all artifice, too.

“S’fine, Cas.” Dean flops back onto his bed. “It was a good answer. I’m just too dumb to get it.”

“Then it wasn’t a good answer at all.” Cas puts his book down. He says, uncertainly, “I have a… I’m going to give you a book.”

Great. More reading. Dean watches him stand up and leave. Koko Taylor sings _I would rather go blind, boy, than to see you walk away from me_ , and Dean thinks that’s probably enough goddamn narrative parallels for today. By the time Cas gets back, Emmylou Harris is singing _It’s a quarter moon in a ten cent town_ instead.

The book Cas hands him is slim, with an off-white cover. There’s a reddish-brown illustration of a volcano right in the middle, and AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF RED above it in brown capital letters, with the cursive subheading _A Novel in Verse_. It looks, to put it mildly, extremely fucking pretentious.

“I won’t be offended if you don’t like it,” Cas says hesitantly, while Dean flips it over. He sees the words _Geryon, a young boy who is also a winged red monster_ and _a young man named Herakles, a cavalier drifter who leaves him at the peak of infatuation_ and _A profound love story_ from the _New York Times Book Review_ , and swallows.

This book doesn’t seem to have very many women in it at all.

“You might think it’s overly… literary,” Cas says, while Dean sits there like an idiot, flipping through the pages. Yeah, okay, fair enough — not like Dean’s known for being the brains of the operation. But then Cas adds, like he can read Dean’s mind, “That’s not to say you’re not smart enough for the text. I simply mean that you might not enjoy the style. But I hope you do, because I… want to give you something you’d like. And you like poetic song lyrics, so maybe...”

“Okay,” Dean says. Clears his throat. Asks, “Why, uh. Why’d you think of this one?”

He looks up at Cas, blinded for a moment by the yellow overhead behind the crisp silhouette of his hair, his shoulders, the light warm in a way the rest of the bunker isn’t. Cas is in sweatpants and a sweatshirt that isn’t anywhere in the vicinity of fashionable, but it strikes Dean that he was an angel, once. That this angel has chosen to live here, belly to the ground in the dirt and muck of apes.

Cas shrugs, and becomes human again. Dean blinks at the sensation of an afterimage, as though Cas had somehow shown Dean his wings and then taken them away, even though none of it was visual at all. “I thought it might interest you to see the generous introspective depth which women afford men,” he says. “And the poet is a woman. So you can just say it counts towards your project.”

Dean sees him jerk his chin slightly towards the record player, and flushes. So it’s that obvious, huh. It’s obvious how hard he has to try to get stuff right that everyone else seems to know right away. “Cool. Thanks, Cas.”

Cas stands there for a moment, and then says, “I’m going to go to my room.”

Dean wishes he could ask him to stay. Not even for— and not that he’d want that, and anyway, it’s not like an angel would be into that, so it’s all a moot point. But just to hang out. If Dean were normal he would say _you can just sleep here if you’re tired_ , and Cas would say, _thank you, Dean_ and he’d maybe swap out his sweatshirt for one of Dean’s band T-shirts, and Dean would say _no prob, dude_ and they would have a nice evening and they would wake up in the morning and wouldn’t have to say _good morning_ to each other in the kitchen, because they would have already said it in Dean’s room.

Instead, Dean says, “Night, Cas,” and Cas picks up his stupid prop book and leaves.

Dean opens the book. _RED MEAT: WHAT DIFFERENCE DID STESICHOROS MAKE?_ The style is— it’s literary, sure, but it’s clear, crisp, shot through with the kind of self-consciousness that Dean likes in Vonnegut’s work even if that’s a whole different beast from this. Dean speeds through the four and a half pages of whatever this is — a chapter, or an introduction, or a preface, maybe — and gets right into the meat of it, which he only realizes is what the chapter is called, too, when he looks back at the top of the page: _RED MEAT: FRAGMENTS OF STESICHOROS_.

He reads it too fast. The lines are small and compact and he speeds through them like he doesn’t know how to enjoy things, the way he eats food like he’s waiting for someone to take it from him. He reads the first fragment:

_I. GERYON_

_Geryon was a monster everything about him was red_

and it only takes him fifteen minutes before he’s there at

_XVI. GERYON’S END_

_The red world And corresponding red breezes_

_Went on Geryon did not_

and he thinks, I’d better re-read this before Cas murders me for not paying enough attention to his book.

And, he recalls, Claire wanted him to report back on his learning-how-to-appreciate-women-respectfully progress, so he takes a picture of the cover and sends it to her, with the caption: **Cas got this for me to read.** She’s always telling him not to end his text messages with periods but it feels wrong if he doesn’t, and anyway, she’s the one who calls him a boomer even though he’s solidly Gen X so he figures he might as well live up to her expectations.

Claire texts back immediately: **never heard of it but one sec im googling**

Dean waits. Four minutes later his phone buzzes with Claire’s latest: two cry-laughing emojis. And then, **lmao read it old man**

**Why the emojis?**

**well according to the internet it’s good but i just think its funny that castiel, your repressed not-boyfriend, gave you a book of Notably Gay poetry to read. fyi this is definitely A Flirtation**

**He’s not my boyfriend.**

**that’s what i said dumbass**

Dean glares at his phone, hoping Claire can feel it through the screen. It was a mistake to tell her about the “was that a flirtation” shit but fuck, he just wanted her to look at Cas like he was more than the monster taking over her dad’s body. And now he’s reaping the rewards. See if he tries to bond with the youth in his life ever again.

He texts her **Well, good night, kiddo.** and she replies with **you’re going to bed at this hour? ok grandpa** and Dean thinks he really will have to go to bed just to recover. Goddamn kids.

Before that, though, he reads the fragments one more time, and thinks of Cas.

_XII. WINGS_

_Steps off a scraped March sky and sinks_

_Up into the blind Atlantic morning One small_

_Red dog jumping across the beach miles below_

_Like a freed shadow_

* * *

Dean’s communing with the coffee machine when Sam walks in to make breakfast. He figures he probably won’t get to sleep tonight, so might as well power through it, but the unfortunate result is that his idiocy doesn’t have a filter anymore to keep it in. Half-conscious, he asks, “So, uh. How do you pick up girls— _women_ , uh, respectfully?”

He hears Sam blast into the table at full speed, and snorts at the _shit shit fuck ow_ that comes from behind him. He turns around and Sam glares, full puppy dog eyes and everything. Aw, hell. “It’s seven AM, Dean.”

“Oh.” Dean’s lost track of his phone but he believes him. It’s always anytime in the bunker. He says, “So it’s actually a reasonable time for coffee, huh.”

“What the— what does that question even _mean_ ,” Sam moans, limping to the counter to get a mug of the coffee Dean spent a whole five minutes laboring over. Spoiled brat.

He slides down the counter so Sam can get his cup of joe, and then slides back up to snatch it right out of his hand, relishing Sam’s expression of betrayal. “I made the coffee, I get the first sip.”

“Coulda defended myself if you hadn’t— _accosted_ me with stupid questions first thing in the morning,” Sam mutters, trudging back to the cabinet to get another mug. “What even— what the hell do you even wanna hook up with a woman for? You cheatin’ on Cas?”

“What?”

“What?”

Dean blinks. Is that— “Are you… _serious_?”

“Are you?” Sam flips his hair out of his eyes. “I mean, it’s not— it’s not like you’ve been out on the market anytime recently, man. I just figured you guys had, y’know.”

Dean sets his coffee down. He realizes he’s shaking. Stupid. “No, I don’t know. What the hell?”

“Okay, never mind.” Sam sips his coffee. “Still, though. What brought this on?”

Jesus Christ. _Cheating on Cas_. What would that even— and like Cas would even, or _Dean_ would even, and anyway, it’s not like— and what does Sam know about it, anyway?

“And it’s not like I haven’t noticed you going over to see Jody more often’n not, these days,” Sam says. “Could at least invite me. I miss her cooking.”

“Whatever you’re implying, I don’t like it,” Dean says, “and anyways, it’s not like Jody exists just to cook for us, Sam, Jesus. You fuckin’—” and Dean realizes he’s about to say the word _misogynist_ unironically, to his own damn college-educated brother who he called Samantha over more than two decades of their lives, and thinks he might need an actual honest to God lie down.

Sam pauses. “Uh. I don’t— I don’t think that about Jody.”

“Obviously I know that.” Dean slurps his coffee aggressively. “Whatever, man.”

“No, let’s—” and Sam’s off, God, Dean shouldn’t have said a damn word. “What— what’s this really about? Like, really, dude, putting— putting aside all that, all that shit I said, what are you really asking about? Because I know you’re not out there in the bars trying to get laid, not now.”

“What would you know,” Dean scoffs, but his heart’s not in it.

Sam just rolls his eyes. Bitch. Or, uh— shit. Uh. “I live here. I’d notice if you were sneaking women in here. You think I don’t notice Cas coming in and out of your room?”

“I’m not—”

“That’s not the _point_ , man. Why are you thinking about this? At seven in the goddamn morning?”

Dean closes his eyes. He figured— he doesn’t know what he thought. That maybe it’d be easier if they started with Dean being a horndog, even though he hasn’t really been the same since he got out of the pit all those years ago, let alone what age has done to him (and he thinks about that sometimes, too, the fact that he’s all these years old and still hasn’t settled down, hasn’t found his person the way Sam has, and shies away from who he’s been thinking circles around since the day they fucking met).

“Actually,” Dean starts, because he realizes there is a place to start that isn’t just the women he has sex with. God, he’s so fucked up. “I was. I was thinkin’ about Mom.”

“I hate this so much,” Sam mutters, which Dean figures is fair enough because he did start this conversation with picking up chicks.

Women. Women he respects, who are his peers and equals, and also extremely sexy.

Dean clears his throat. “Dad taught us a lot of shit growing up,” and Sam nods at that, like it’s a given. Dean would like to know when in the hell that became a given, because he’s only just figured it out and every day the truth of it slithers in and out of his grasp. “About, about women. Especially.”

Sam’s mouth twists thoughtfully. “Okay. Okay, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“And— and we both got it, but. I dunno how, but you saw through it. And I didn’t.” He wishes there was something to do with himself, his hands, other than standing there at the counter looking at Sam, his brother, his baby. Thinking about it, about Mom, he realizes that the man in front of him is a man he raised. This boy who is taller than him is a thirty-seven year old man and Dean did that, Dean had a hand in that, Dean and all the things in Sam that make him all his own. The grief of what Lucifer did strikes him clean through some days, and today it’s as sharp as lightning, thinking of all that goodness burnt down in Hell into something just as strong but hurt with it, permanent and awful.

Sam says, soft, gentle, like he’s soothing a scared dog, “I don’t know if I really saw through it, and definitely not right away. I think I just got lucky.”

“Nothin’ about what you made yourself into was luck,” Dean says, because it’s on his mind, and there’s nothing else to say about it. Sam goes quiet and still. And Dean, realizing what it maybe sounded like to a brother he’s had more than his fair share of fights with, half of them punctuated with the word _freak_ , adds, “You’re a— a good man. That was a compliment, dude. It’s— I’m proud to—”

These days, an all-nighter isn’t the end of the world but it’s not par for the course, either. Dean feels his eyes watering and wonders if he can blame it on exhaustion or if there’s something in his coffee or if it’s just too many hours reading goddamn Anne Carson that’s made him like this.

Dean knows the moment Sam notices, because he sits up straight from his perch on the table, leaning forward with a furrow in his brow. “Dean, are you—”

“I’m fine.” Dean clears his throat. “I’m— it’s just. Don’t wanna be an asshole.”

Sam frowns. He’s clearly thinking it over, and eventually he says, “Why’re you thinking about this now? You know— you know there’s not a hunter around who’d say you treated them different for being a woman. You get the job done just fine.”

The way he says it — _you get the job done just fine_ , like that’s all there is. But there’s more to them. Dean and Sam both deserve more.

In honor of that, he says it again, because he didn’t finish it. He says, “I said I was thinkin’ about Mom.”

“Yeah.”

“I was thinkin’ about when— when she went under, a few years ago, with that machine the British Men of Letters had. When I had to go in after her. Like what— what Toni did to you.”

“I’m— don’t—” and then Sam blows out a breath. Dean sees his right hand shaking on the metal behind him, his left hand clenched around the handle of his coffee mug. “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”

Trying to fix it, Dean asks, “You want breakfast?”

“Tell me.” There’s no room for negotiation in Sam’s voice. Dean sees his throat bob and realizes what he should’ve known already — Sam wants this part of the conversation to be over.

So Dean says, “I saw— she’d made this place for herself, in her mind, a memory, from when I was a little kid and you were just a baby. And it made me so fucking—”

Angry. He’d been so, so fucking angry. Almost unbelievable, how angry he was. He can feel it now, the words he said and above all the exhilaration of it, the crisp sensation of his skin against his shirt like he was on coke or something. The adrenaline rush of saying those words, things he hadn’t even thought to himself, actually saying them aloud. The unreality of it. It only could’ve happened in a dream, he knows now, and he knew it then, too. “The things I said to her, y’know.”

“Yeah.” And Dean realizes that yeah, Sam probably does know. Sam probably knows better than Dean knows, what Dean might’ve said to their mom.

The wind taken out of his sails, Dean shrugs. “Anyway, that’s it.”

Sam puts his mug down. “Tell— you can still tell me what you said. Even though I can guess. Tell me anyway.”

He hides. There’s no other word for what Dean does — he hunches forward, hand over his belly like he’s in danger, curled in looking down at his knees so he doesn’t have to face Sam. He whispers, “I said I hated her.”

Sam doesn’t say a word.

Dean says, “I told her I blamed her for— for everything. That it was her fault, everything that happened to you— I told her I had to be your, I had to be everything for you, and it was her fault for makin’ that deal with ol’ yellow eyes, and I told her I forgave her.” He looks down at his feet, ashamed of it. “Can you believe that? She did what we’ve done so many fuckin’ times, and she died for it, and I had the nerve to say— and Sam, it wasn’t her fault. She made that deal but she had no choice leavin’ us, and the rest of it, that was on Dad.”

He swallows. The floor is dirty, and he thinks, _I oughtta mop it up. I oughtta get some soap in here_. And then he says, hoarse, “Wasn’t her fault at all, what I had to be for you. I thought I was so right to say it, and now, I’m not so sure.”

Sam’s shoes come closer, and so do the other six feet of him. “It’s— it’s complicated,” Sam says from above Dean’s head, and then laughs quietly at himself for it. Dean’s mouth ticks upwards, too. Yeah. His relationship with his mom is Facebook relationship-level complicated. Hilarious. And Sam says, “You— you had to say it. Even if it wasn’t— she had to know.”

“Can’t help but feel like it’s always the women in our lives makin’ up for Winchester mistakes,” Dean says, and Sam pulls him in for a hug, because he can’t exactly say anything to refute it. Dean’s thinking about Charlie in that— that bathtub, butchered, the obscenity of it. Like she was an animal. He’s thinking about Rowena walking into Sam’s knife. He’s thinking about Ellen and Jo, about the way Jo had— the way she must’ve put her, her hand over that trigger—

“I thought this conversation would go different,” Dean says wetly into Sam’s shirt, bent over and weeping like a sad sack of shit, the grief all tangled up with the self-hatred of it and through it all the bitter sense that if his dad walked in the door right now and saw Dean like this he’d walk right back out.

“I— yeah, uh. Hah.” Sam holds him closer, hands over Dean’s shoulder blades. “Me, too.”

Dean shakes, knows tears are rolling out of his eyes but can’t feel any of it except for Sam’s warmth and the softness of his shirt. “Thanks, Sam.”

Sam exhales. His arms tighten. He says, “Can— can I, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t—” and Sam’s breath shakes out of him. “Can, is it— can you, uh, not mention Toni Bevell without— without warning me first?”

Dean closes his eyes. Can’t do a goddamn thing right. “Got it,” he says, fast and simple, because if he thinks any more about Sam’s fingernails pressed white against the metal table in their kitchen and the way his words kept stuttering over themselves, he’ll scream.

And then Sam says, “I took Introduction to Women and Gender Studies and a women’s lit class at Stanford if you want me to look up the syllabus. I bet I could get someone to send the readings to me.”

“I hate you,” Dean snorts, because the phrase _women and gender studies_ gives him hives. And then he thinks, _John Winchester’s dead, you piece of shit, you don’t have to act like that anymore_ and adds, quietly, “But that would be nice, actually.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, but Dean figures he’s grinning, that self-satisfied dickhead. Gotta love him.

* * *

Every fucking time Dean ends up in the bunker library something earth-shattering happens. Like last week, right, Sam was sipping a hot pink smoothie or something out of a Starbucks cup. They don’t even have a Starbucks in Lebanon. Sam drove forty miles for a frappucino. And Dean — trying so, so fucking hard not to be an asshole over it — said, _you, uh, likin’ your drink there, Sammy?_ and Sam took an obnoxiously loud sip and said, a shit-eating grin on his face, _this is self-care_ , and Dean had to make four pots of chili to calm down. They’re still eating the leftovers.

Dean, all right, Dean’s a piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve nice things. But what he does deserve is _violence_ , not— not whatever the fuck this is, following him around. Mundane prods at his human weaknesses. Personal instead of cosmic crises.

This week, Dean walks in to see Cas looking at a photograph on the table, casual in one of Dean’s hand-me-down flannels. Dean doesn’t have the gift of foresight, so he doesn’t know it’s going to be A Thing. He just says, once he gets close enough to see it, “She’s pretty. Who is that?”

Sure, he didn’t have to say she was pretty, but she _is_. First off, it’s an old-timey photo, sepia, so it’s not like Dean has a shot with her, putting aside his line of work. And secondly, he’s not trying to be gross about it. He is actively reflecting on his words. He is engaging in constructively critical self-talk.

But even from his seat perched on the edge of the table, a safe and platonic distance away from Cas, he can see that she’s gorgeous. It’s something in her eyes, maybe, or the tilt of her mouth. He wants to treat her right, is all. Strange, that he’s thinking about _her_ and not the way she looks, but that’s what strikes him.

“I remember sitting for this photo,” Cas says, smiling faintly, and Dean’s pathetic little pea brain flatlines.

Oblivious, Cas continues. “She asked for a photograph that she could see once her body was returned to her. I think she wanted proof that it had happened. I’m surprised it ended up in the Men of Letters archives, although I suppose I shouldn’t be.”

Dean looks down at his hands. He looks up at Cas’s face. He looks at the photo on the table. The photo of Cas. As a woman. Oh god. “That was you,” Dean says hoarsely, thinking, _I told a guy he looked pretty_ , and then right on the heels of it, _I thought his vessel looked pretty, this is a vessel, too, this is Cas’s vessel you’ve never really seen Cas in your life you’re not_ capable _of knowing what Cas looks like_ and that’s about when he has to go have another lie down to prevent Chili Production 2: The Reckoning. “I— Nice. She’s. Photo. Gotta go?”

“Dean—” Cas pushes the photo away — face-up, Dean thinks hysterically, it’s still face-up, he can still see her face — and stands up. “Are you all right?”

“A-OK,” Dean croaks out, and slides off the table.

Cas reaches out and before Dean can flinch back he makes contact, hand on Dean’s forearm, hot like a knife through him. “Dean?”

“Just a stomach bug, probably,” Dean says because there’s no way he can get out of this with his dignity intact. “I’ll— bathroom. Night, Cas.” And before Cas can say anything about the fact that it’s four in the goddamn afternoon, Dean hightails it back to his room.

He can’t stop thinking about it. Cas. Cas as a woman. Or— Cas as Cas, in a woman’s vessel. He doesn’t want to think about what he would’ve been like if the person who’d raised him from Hell looked like that. They woulda fucked half a year in and then Dean woulda iced her out, he knows it, he knows that’s what woulda happened, but fuck, wouldn’t it have been easier? Wouldn’t it have been worth it?

Finally, he makes it to the relative safety of his room and closes the door behind him.

She’d — Cas, Cas in that vessel — she’d be so gentle on him. Cas now, the way he is, there’s no way anything about him could be gentle. Dean can’t even think it. Guys aren’t like that. Guys don’t cup your cheek and kiss your jaw soft, the way— the way Lisa, fuck, the way she did when Dean would wake up in the night sick over Sam, sick from all of it, he wouldn’t— Cas wouldn’t. Cas wouldn’t give him that. He can’t. He’s not built for it.

Dean hunches over. It’s not even a big deal. It’s nothing. He knew Cas was in a vessel, as much as this body is his now. He knew Cas wasn’t— wasn’t human, wasn’t a _man_. But this. Like some fucked up flare went off in the back of his dumbass brain, signalling _hey idiot here’s another hurdle for you to trip over_. It coulda been different. He could’ve— he could’ve taken Cas into the backseat of his car when he came back from the Empty and he could’ve mouthed down his throat and said _you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re here and you’re alive_. Fuck, he’s in _love_ with Cas, oh fuck, he could’ve asked Cas to stay. If Cas was a woman he could’ve asked Cas to stay.

A knock at the door sends Dean tripping forward, flinching away. “Dean?”

Shit. “Hey, uh, Cas,” Dean says. “Just— busy, what’s up?”

Nothing comes through the door for a few long seconds, and then Cas says, “I just wanted to check in on you. You seemed… distressed.”

“Everything’s fine,” Dean squeaks, too fast, and closes his eyes. He’s so fucking embarrassing.

A pause. “Is it about my former vessel? Dean, she was… back then I didn’t really understand the nature, the violation, of possession. I admit it. But she was as well-treated as could be, considering the circumstances.” He chuckles, muffled through the door. Dean’s chest hurts. “She didn’t seem to have many complaints, at least.”

“That’s not it,” Dean says, because he can’t bear to think that Cas is worried about Dean pointing fingers over possession, as if it wasn’t Dean who let Gadreel into Sam, as if it wasn’t Dean who said yes to Michael. Aw, hell. He opens the door. “Cas, it’s not about that.”

Cas looks at him. Straight through him, like always. Dean can’t imagine him as anything else. His square jaw, his stubble, those blue eyes. Dean knows enough about himself now to know what he wants in bed — knows he likes gentle things, knows he’s soft, weak — but he could take it if Cas pushed him around. For Cas just to kiss him, yeah, he’d take the rest of it, the rest that inevitably comes with letting a man into your bed.

But he won’t ask for it, Dean decides, right at the end of that revelation. He’s not— he’s too old for that, for the secret things he wanted in bar bathrooms that made him hurt worse the morning after. He won’t drag Cas into that, not unless he asks for it first.

“What’s wrong, Dean?” Cas asks, and Dean looks away.

“Was just a surprise, is all.” Dean figures he has to offer something, seeing as he left the library like he had a Hellhound on his ass. “It’s not a big deal.”

Cas sighs. “May I come in, Dean?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, the pretense of him being busy or having the goddamn flu totally obliterated.

Cas sits sideways on the desk chair, where he always sits. Like it’s his seat. Like he has a place in Dean’s bedroom. “Will you tell me how you’re feeling?”

Dean sits down on the edge of his bed, facing Cas. He looks at the floor, because he can’t look at any part of Cas’s body. “You know we would’ve fucked if you’d still been in that vessel when you raised me.” He doesn’t even realize he’s going to say it until it happens, winces at the way it comes out.

Cas takes it in stride, though. “That doesn’t surprise me.” Dean looks up and sees Cas’s smile, crooked on his face. “The shape of my vessel certainly would’ve had no bearing on how I feel about you.”

That’s. “Cas,” Dean says, because this. This is close to asking for it.

“I know what’s possible,” Cas says. “I know what I look like isn’t what you want. I’ve made my peace with that. This is my body, and I’ve come to care for it as it is.”

“It’s a good body,” Dean says mindlessly, not putting together what it must sound like until Cas looks up sharply. And then he thinks. Maybe he did want it to sound like that. He says, softly, “It’s good, Cas.”

Cas stills. Dean’s eyes rove over the broadness of his shoulders in Dean’s clothes, the way Dean’s shirt hugs Cas tight when it falls loose around Dean’s own arms.

He doesn’t think of his dad taking them to wrestling matches and rambling drunk about the way real men fight, the way Dean oughtta take a page outta these guy’s books and bulk up a little. He doesn’t think of Dad quietly steering him away from two men kissing in an alley behind their motel one night, asking Dean with his voice full of all the concern in the world to make sure Sam doesn’t see that shit. He doesn’t think of his anxious desire at twenty-two, the whiskey some nameless man bought him and the exhilarating rush of being on his knees in a bathroom stall and strong fingers in his hair that he’d loved, he’d loved it, and then he’d puked it all up the next day and hated himself worse than anything in the entire sinful world.

He just reaches out, across the space between the bed and the chair, and puts his hand on Cas’s knee. He says, “I like the way you look, Cas.”

Cas’s face softens. “Dean—”

“Wait, I just.” Dean closes his eyes. He can’t be this far away from Cas, the distance of a whole three feet between his bed and Cas’s chair.

He does something absolutely fucking surreal. He slides to his knees.

Looking up at Cas, hands on Cas’s thighs, he says, “You know this is weird for me. Right?”

“I know.” Cas cups his cheek. His fingers are so gentle. Dean’s breath comes faster, fuck, fuck. He’s so gentle on him. He can’t take his eyes off him. Cas says, “You don’t have to be on your knees for me, Dean.”

“I want to be,” Dean says, near-instinct, no thought behind it, and he hates himself for it, one bright flash of cruelty deep in his soul. He winces. “Shit, Cas.” He rubs his hand over his mouth, pulls himself away until there’s no contact, until he’s sprawled there, on the floor, alone. “What the hell— what the hell.”

In that quiet moment, Dean really fucking thinks about it. He considers — it’s unbelievable, but. He thinks. He thinks Cas would have kissed him soft, if Dean had just let him. His hand on his cheek was so warm. He could’ve had that.

“You have so much love in your heart, Dean.” Cas smiles at him again, easy and soft, that crooked heartbreaker of a mouth. “I don’t need this from you to know you love me.”

“Yeah, I’m just.” Dean blows out a heavy breath. Humiliating. If he’d just gone through with it then it would’ve been done, but instead he’s just — stalled.

But fuck. Fuck. He’s halfway there. He might as well — he might as well try. Jesus fucking Christ. He says, “You know what I’ve been workin’ on. The, the way my dad was like. With women. That crap.”

Cas nods encouragingly.

“Maybe there’s things.” He realizes, all of a sudden, that he’s about to say the same thing he said to that priest, five years ago. Things, people, feelings that he’s never felt before. Always running in circles, Dean Winchester is. Looking straight ahead at Cas’s knees sharp under Sam’s oversized sweatpants, he says, “Shit I didn’t let myself feel. Didn’t let myself want.”

“Is this one of those things?”

“Yeah.” Dean curls forward, hiding away from it. Looks at his own feet, bare. His bent old man toes, his ankles weak after decades of running for his life. “Yeah, Cas.”

Cas asks, “Please come here, Dean,” something fragile in his voice, that deep baritone, and Dean heaves himself up to standing because he owes Cas this much, at least.

Cas stands, too. He puts a hand on Dean’s cheek. His palm is dry; his thumb rubs gently back and forth against the skin under Dean’s eye and his fingertips brush against Dean’s ear. He says, “You learned a way to live. To love. Under your father, yes, and under the pressures of the rest of the world around you. And you’ve come to realize these were wrong.” His other hand settles on Dean’s waist. They’re so close. Cas just keeps looking right at him. He says, “There’s nothing shameful in learning a new way to be, Dean.”

“Cas— fuck, Cas,” Dean chokes out, looking down because he can’t fucking take it.

Cas leans in and presses a kiss to Dean’s jawline. Soft. Soft enough to soothe the roiling mess in Dean’s stomach, his grinding teeth. To soothe the way Dean’s sick over everything he’s lost, everything he’s done. Oh, God. “Of course I want you,” Cas murmurs, and Dean shivers with it, with Cas’s hands everywhere and his body so fucking close, hot like a supernova. “There’s no shame in love.”

“Sappy,” Dean grits out, and raises his head to meet Cas’s eyes. He breathes in. Sounding shakier than it should, his voice asks, “If I kiss you, do I get to make a joke about how fucking gay this is?”

“Sam might take offence.” Cas’s mouth twitches up. “You know he’s a fervent ally.”

“Fuck,” Dean laughs, and it’s then, in that laugh, that he presses a kiss to Cas’s mouth. He wants to taste him smiling. “Shit, Cas,” he mumbles through it, finds his hands clenched in Cas’s shirt — Dean’s shirt on Cas, on Cas’s body, the body of a man. A man’s body that’s gentle with him. He presses kisses everywhere, Cas’s forehead and the tip of his nose and the ridge of his cheekbones and his mouth, always back to his mouth, that mouth of his, the one Dean must’ve first seen in a dream for how strong the jolt of recognition was when he met Cas on this earth.

“Dean,” Cas says right back, both of his hands gentle but strong, slipping down to hold Dean’s waist as Cas ducks away from Dean’s wandering mouth to press a kiss against his throat. “It’s amazing,” he says, so quiet Dean has to strain to listen, has to really really fucking want to hear it, “how much I thought I loved you before today. I left Heaven for it, and it was nothing compared to how I feel about you now.”

“Cas—”

Cas’s hands slide lower, over Dean’s hips, pulling him in, fuck, close, so _close_ , and Dean just has to feel it. He kisses his Adam’s apple, kisses the base of Dean’s throat and Dean shivers, feels goosebumps rise from the sheer intimacy of it. He wants to make a stupid joke about Cas being so fucking cheesy, but he looks at Cas’s face and. That’s the face of someone who knows, truly, what they’re saying. Someone who believes it with every fiber of their being. He can’t make fun of that.

“I love you too, Cas,” he offers, because it’s all he has, and it wrings him right out just to say it. He kisses him again, puts his hands on him.

Cas smiles into their kiss. Dean loves that smile. Fuck, he _loves_ it. “How fortunate I am that you do,” he says, low and soothing like the river, and it coulda come out cheap, coulda come out _lucky for me_ , but instead he said it like that. Like Dean deserves to be treated like something sacred.

Dean closes his eyes. It’s so quiet in their room, but Dean feels full up in every sense, like trumpets are playing and hands are on him everywhere and he’s just finished an all-you-can-eat buffet. Like he has nothing to worry about in the world. Like he’s safe. Like he knows who he is — and the person he is deserves to live.


End file.
